In today's contact center solutions, customer experiences are much more personalized. Experiences, including service level targets, are highly customized to meet the specific needs of the customer and the situation. First-In-First-Out (FIFO) and priorities are both being replaced by specific service time and completion time goals for each individual contact. The number of potential different service time goals is high and unknown to the system doing the wait time estimation.
One example of a prior art wait time prediction solution is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,506,898, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. The '898 patent describes a methodology for predicting wait time in a contact center queue of contacts. It is specifically optimized for queues with FIFO behavior and a number of priority levels. It adjusts rapidly to changing conditions and provides accurate estimates of waiting time even when conditions are dynamic.
The prior art wait-time estimation mechanisms rely on the behavior of a FIFO queue to estimate wait time. With FIFO queues being replaced by specific service time and completion time goals for each individual contact, a new mechanism for estimating wait time is required.